Kendrapara:
An Olive Ridley turtle, which was earlier tagged with a satellite-linked tracking device at Gahirmatha beach in Odisha’s Kendrapara district, has travelled around 1,000 kilometres in the sea in 51 days to reach the Andhra Pradesh coast, an official said on Friday.
The turtle traversed the waters of Sri Lanka, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu before reaching the coast of the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, he said.
“The turtle navigated through the sea waters of Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, and reached the Andhra Pradesh coast in 51 days. It covered around 1,000 kms,” the official said.
The latest satellite tracking map of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) has located one of the tagged turtles moving in the sea waters in Andhra Pradesh, and found that it has navigated around 1,000 km, said Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (PCCF) Prem Shankar Jha.
A turtle, tagged with a tracking device in Odisha four years back, had earlier covered 3,500 kilometres to lay eggs at a beach in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra recently.
The Olive Ridley turtles turn up in millions for mass nesting along the Odisha coast every year. Gahirmatha beach, off the Bay of Bengal, in Kendrapara district is acclaimed as the World’s largest known nesting ground of these marine species.
The aquatic animals also turn up at the Rushikulya river mouth in Ganjam district and the Devi river mouth in Puri for mass nesting.
According to officials, around 3,000 turtles are tagged with a tracking device annually.
Experts believed that at least 1 lakh turtles are required to be tagged for obtaining better information on their reproductive biology, movements and growth rates, migratory route and areas of foraging.
The Odisha Forest Department had taken up the tagging exercise in 1999, and at least two tagged turtles then were sighted on the Sri Lanka coast.
Later, the tagging exercise was suspended, and the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) resumed the exercise in 2021.
Between 2021 and 2024, around 12,000 turtles were tagged in Gahirmatha and Rushikulya river mouth nesting grounds, the officials said.
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